Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image processing apparatus that morphs part of an image.
Related Art
In recent years, digital cameras that have a function of capturing a subject more beautifully, and software that has a function of processing a captured image so that it looks more beautiful have become widely used. A function of morphing part of an image is an example of one of such functions. When this function is used, it is possible to perform correction such that the face or mouth of a person in a picture looks smaller, or the eyes of the person larger, for example.
Various methods have been developed for morphing part of an image without bringing a feeling of strangeness to viewers of the image. For example, in an image morphing apparatus disclosed in JP 5240795B, morphing of an image is performed by dividing a region (such as a person's face) of an image that is to be corrected into a grid, and calculating shift amounts and directions of pixels for the respective squares of the grid.
JP 5240795B is an example of background art.
In the apparatus disclosed in JP 5240795B, image morphing processing is performed by temporarily expanding image data in a memory space, and calculating the degree of correction for each square of the grid using three-dimensional spline interpolation. On the other hand, when a portable device such as a mobile phone has the image morphing function, there is often the case where, due to restrictions of memory capacity and processing speed, it is difficult to expand a large amount of data and to perform a complicated arithmetic operation.
One or more embodiments of the present invention provides an image processing apparatus that can morph an image with a small amount of processing and a small amount of memory consumption.